


Light in the Dark

by draculard



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, But now with more knives!, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hallucinations, Killer Horror, Malcolm and Martin's Complex Love-Hate Relationship, Mild Gore, Morality, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25450816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: It was the touch of small hands against his chest that woke him.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Light in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CousinShelley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



It was the touch of small hands against his chest that woke him. Malcolm craned his neck before he’d even really woken up, his eyes processing nothing before him — like the whole room was static, until suddenly it wasn’t. He looked down at his chest, straining against the handcuffs and chains he’d locked himself into just hours before.

There was nothing there. His white undershirt glowed in the moonlight from the window, his skin damp and lungs billowing underneath. But he’d felt something, he was sure of it — tiny hands, like the hands of a child, the fingers all facing the window like whoever touched him was standing to his left and shaking him awake.

He glanced left, taking in the darkened apartment, cataloguing the shadows where something — some _one_ , he corrected himself — could hide.

And then, so faint he could barely hear it: _Malcolm, wake up._

His hands jerked, the shackles pulling tight against his wrists. He looked wildly around the room even as he fumbled to unlock his cuffs, trying to figure out which direction the voice was coming from. The key stuck in the lock, twisting uselessly between his fingers for one long, terrible moment before he felt the tumblers slot into place.

The handcuffs clicked open.

On his left side, he felt small fingers close around his wrist. 

_Wake up,_ the voice said again.

A moment ago, Malcolm had been a flurry of adrenaline; now, he sat up in bed, his chest heaving and his hair slick with sweat, but he was as still as could be. His chin angled slightly to the left, allowing him to see the empty space beside him.

The space where, against all reason, a child’s hand _must_ be, because he could feel it, cold and dry, against his skin.

Slowly, Malcolm shifted. The child’s hand stayed put. He moved gingerly, the same way he might approach a wild animal, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. When he stood, the invisible child moved with him.

Did he see a flicker in the air before him? A glimpse of a silhouette so insubstantial and fleeting that he couldn’t process it?

“Who are you?” Malcolm asked through numb lips.

The child didn’t answer. _It doesn’t matter,_ Malcolm thought. Somehow, he knew. Somehow, though he wouldn’t think this in the light of day, he recognized his own small hand.

And he recognized what the invisible child was doing, too — it was leading him deeper. Leading him somewhere he didn’t want to go. But what else could he do?

Without shoes or a coat — and fully aware that it was snowing outside — Malcolm followed.

* * *

How many miles was it from his apartment to the townhouse where he’d lived as a child? Malcolm had known the exact answer ever since he signed the lease, but now it danced on the back of his tongue, behind his teeth, and refused to be named. In any case, the walk across ice-slick city sidewalks felt too short, the cold alternately numbing his feet and making them burn.

He felt snowflakes settling in his hair and melting on the back of his neck. He felt a child’s hand in his own, tugging him onward.

And before he knew it, he was there, and the little figure in front of him was just clear enough that Malcolm could see the faint outline of messy hair less than four feet off the ground. He looked down and for just a moment saw bruised knuckles and the edge of a grubby Bandaid on the hand around his; then the hand was once again invisible.

 _It’s open,_ said the voice inside his head. _Go on._

The front door was painted red. Had it been that color when Malcolm lived here? Staring at it made him queasy, like he sensed instinctively there was something wrong but couldn’t put his finger on what. The voice — the invisible hand — led him up the front steps, numb feet stubbing against wood, splinters jabbing off the porch and into his toes. Malcolm reached for the knob with his right hand, tried it.

It turned.

He looked down. For just a moment, he saw small fingers clinging to his sleeve, saw his own childhood face staring up at him.

But it was his father’s voice that whispered, _Go on, Malcolm. Go in._

* * *

His house, but not his house — that was all Malcolm could think as he let his child self guide him down the halls. The wallpaper was different here, the little flowers on the pattern lilting gently to the left instead of the right. The scaffolding, he swore, was an inch lower here; the chairs had been moved in the dining room, just enough to make him notice, not enough for him to be sure anything had really changed.

Doors were set into walls where they hadn’t been before. He opened one as he passed, stuck his head inside and saw an empty walk-in closet extending ten feet ahead of him. But this wall — he knew for a _fact_ this wall faced the cold, dark alleyway. There wasn’t room for a ten-foot closet. There wasn’t room for a _one_ -foot closet.

But he touched the walls, confirmed they were real. He took a step inside—

—and his child self tugged him back.

 _Not in there,_ the voice said, smiling. Teasing. His father’s voice, Malcolm remembered, the way he sounded playing hide-and-seek.

At the same time, he remembered hiding beneath the table, letting the tablecloth hide him from his father — and he remembered his father’s hand closing around his, guiding him in how to hold his knife so the blade wouldn’t snap when he—

The child pulled him. Malcolm followed. He ignored the strange new-familiar doors lining the halls, the wood bulging in and out like the door itself could breathe, nails scratching softly on the other side. He ignored the moving shadows he saw underneath some doors, like someone on the other side was shuffling into the light. 

“Where are we going?” he asked.

 _You know,_ said the voice, indistinguishable from his child self and his father. _You know._

The basement door slammed open before them. Malcolm dug his heels in, felt the expensive, flimsy carpet his mother had picked out decades ago rip beneath his feet. Still, he moved inexorably forward, the grip on his hand as unavoidable as birth or taxes.

His heart thudded in his chest. He didn’t want to think about what else was unavoidable. 

The basement stairs creaked beneath him, the very structure seeming to sag and sway beneath his weight as if it alone had aged while Malcolm was away. The odor of mildew and years of dust reached his nose, but there was something else beneath it, something worse.

The dank, metallic smell of spoiled blood. The slaughterhouse scent of wet, torn skin and exposed muscle and fat. 

_Come see me,_ the voice whispered in his head. _You haven’t visited in so long._

In the darkness, Malcolm stumbled over the last stair. He opened his fist by reflex, suddenly losing his grip on the child’s hand just as its outline started to solidify. He regained his balance and groped around blindly, searching for the hand again — or for the child’s shoulder, or the soft and feathery hair on its head — but felt nothing. Felt _worse_ than nothing.

Felt that it was just him and someone else in the basement now, and that somebody wasn’t his child self at all.

Slowly, Malcolm inched forward, shuffling bare feet over the dirty, uncarpeted floor. He held his hands out before him, careful not to bump into anything as his eyes adjusted. Careful not to think, too, of what exactly his hands might find.

Without thinking about it — without questioning his own motivations — he hunted for the smell of flesh and blood.

“This is all in my head,” he muttered. His voice sounded firm and clear to him, like an utterly reasonable stranger was speaking his thoughts in the dark. “That’s why the house is different, yet the same. That’s why I can hold my child self’s hand. That’s why—”

His fingers struck something metal. He pulled up short, blinking until he could just make out the shape of a hanging, wrought-iron cage before him.

Like a giant birdcage, he thought deliriously. A hysterical smile twisted his lips. He clutched the cage bars with both hands, curled his fingers around the cold metal, and met the eyes of the man inside. 

Martin Whitley smiled back.

“You’re dying,” Malcolm said. His eyes flickered down to the gaping wound in Martin’s abdomen, the congealed blood, the exposed yellow sponge of fat and the slick pink-red curve of spilled intestines. Below Martin’s waist, there was no room for anything else in the cage. And there _wasn’t_ anything else in the cage. What Malcolm was looking at was his father’s severed torso, the legs discarded somewhere else in the basement.

And the eyes still moving, the lips still smiling.

 _You’re here,_ Martin said.

Malcolm took a deep breath. He remembered again his father’s hand showing him how to hold a knife. Who did he stab? Who did he kill? His eyes flickered down again to the wound, to the uneven, hacksaw line of the cut.

Like a child did it.

Through the cage, Malcolm took his father’s hand and squeezed cold fingers in his own.

“I’m here,” he said.


End file.
